Too many Diversity & Inclusion initiatives are stuck in bias and privilege, rather than helping people envision and enact an ideal workplace culture. I recently responded to a disappointing Diversity & Inclusion RFP that was stuck on bias and privilege, when it should be focused on helping people envision and build a workplace culture that encourages and empowers their highest possible individual and group contribution. The operating assumption, hearkening back to the ’70’s and ’80’s, seems to be that we just need to get people to stop being jerks. —-
If we can’t reach for something higher than that, we should all just go home.
Diversity and inclusion work should be inspiring; it should facilitate us in drawing on all of our individual and group resources to learn how to make extraordinarily positive teamwork the new norm, and then build upwards from there. Instead, too many organizations are treating D &I trainees like kids in detention– drilling stale definitions and business case arguments into them, pushing them to own up to their biases and then wondering why people try so hard to avoid the classes. Almost makes you wonder if they actually want their initiatives to fail. More likely, someone has made the assessment that the people in their company are so dense, so retrograde that getting them just to be nice to people is the best you can aim for. And, in some cases, the desire to get majority group members to pay for their oppressive behavior/unconsciousness/privilege leads to training designs that are basically punishing.
I’ve never worked with a group whose members couldn’t hearken back to a time when they had a really good experience working with someone different than them. They not only can remember such a time, they can identify what made that experience work out so well and can name ways to apply that learning to their present workplace. They want a healthier work climate, they want to have positive, productive, even fun relationships across difference. Now THERE’S a change objective we can all get behind.
